Wipro rejigs leadership roles ahead of new fiscal plan

Two years into his role as Wipro CEO, Abidali Neemuchwala is undertaking a leadership rejig, ahead of rolling out his strategy for the next fiscal.Shilpa Phadnis | TNN | February 07, 2018, 09:44 IST

Two years into his role as Wipro CEO, Abidali Neemuchwala is undertaking a leadership rejig. The move comes ahead of rolling out his strategy for the next fiscal.

Anand Padmanabhan, president of energy and utilities and construction (ENU) — which contributes over $1 billion to Wipro’s revenue, will now be president of business development and strategic sales. His long-time colleague N S Balasubramanian, who is the president of the manufacturing and technology business, the company’s second-largest business unit with revenues of $1.8 billion, replaces Padmanabhan as head of ENU. Balasubramanian became the head of manufacturing and tech in 2003, when it was still a sub $100-million business.

In the last few years, Wipro’s ENU business has faced headwinds on account of the weakness in the oil industry to which it has a relatively high exposure. Wipro’s energy and utilities vertical posted a 7.9% sequential decline in the December quarter, largely because of one of its clients, Carillion, filing for bankruptcy.

Padmanabhan, who has been with Wipro for 31 years, was instrumental in the company acquiring US-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)’s global oil & gas information technology business for $150 million in 2011. He also led the $195-million acquisition of ATCO to expand its ENU footprint in Canada.

Padmanabhan’s new role will be to grow and drive localization in what Wipro calls 'leveraged geographies’, including Asia Pacific & Japan, Continental Europe, Canada, Middle East and Africa. Its geo-heads Christophe Martinoli (Continental Europe), Sanjeev Tayal (Middle East) and Xavier Diniz (Canada) will report to Padmanabhan.

Jimit Arora, who leads US-based advisory Everest Group’s IT services research practice, said Padmanabhan’s new cross-industry role creates more leadership capacity for the firm outside North America.